trying to do it all and live to tell about it

SoCal: Living the Good Life in San Clemente

San Clemente is a small beach town between San Diego and LA and it so happens to be where Candice, my bestie from Boston, and her husband Vince live. I visited once before last July and this time Chris came for the trip. It wasn’t too hard to convince him since surfing was involved.

I feel like San Clemente is the quintessential image of what I imagined California to be like before I moved here. Really tan, blond-haired people running around in bathing suits, driving Jeep Wranglers, surfing, and playing beach volleyball. What a hard life. On Saturday after a nice brunch at Antoine’s Cafe, we went out to San Onofre Beach and we were there pretty much all day. Vince was able to get two surfboards so he and Chris surfed (the Church break) while Candice and I laid out, slathered in sun screen, hidden under floppy hats and behind a beach umbrella. We did get some color I swear.

Chris catching a wave.

In the evening we went to the San Clemente Pier where Ocean Fest was going on. Oddly enough last year when I visited, it happened to coincide with Ocean Fest! I just can’t seem to get enough of it apparently. Ocean Fest is a weekend event in San Clemente with surfing competitions, foot races, food, games, etc.

As a part of Ocean Fest, there was a concert on the beach by the Flock of 80’s, a cover band of yes, you guessed it, 80s music. They didn’t play any Journey though! Lots of Duran Duran and other stuff I didn’t really recognize.

The band was pretty good. They branched out a bit and started playing 90s music for their last few songs. As we were leaving the sun was setting on the beach. So pretty!

That night we ate at Cafe Mimosa, a French restaurant which is the sister restaurant of Antoine’s. Overall, the food was excellent, servers were super nice and pleasant, joking with you as if you were family. The service itself on the other hand, let’s just say it was European. It was slow, very slow. But good thing we weren’t in a rush (just very hungry). The next day, we went to the Rainbow Sandals Outlet. Did you know Rainbows are originally from San Clemente? I got myself two pairs, one for me and one for my sister. I feel really California right now. After Candice and I headed to Fashion Island (it’s a mall, sadly not an island of fashion – I wish!) and Vince and Chris went to a shooting range. It seemed the guys didn’t want to shop, strange. For lunch, Candice took me to True Food Kitchen.

It is a chain restaurant but their food is all about local, sustainable ingredients. They have awesome juices too. I got the Kale Aid – kale, apple, cucumber, celery, lemon and ginger. It was very kale-y at first but the more I drank, the more I liked it. Recharged we hit the shopping mall. I ended up getting a couple shirts for Afghanistan. I am heading to Kabul this Saturday for work – bananas I know. More on this later! After shopping for a few hours, we met back up with Vince and Chris at South of Nick’s for some amazing Mexican! We capped the night by watching The Bachelorette season finale. I’m happy with the results 🙂 It was such a great weekend and it made it really hard to go to work on Monday. Hope to be back down soon!